killer documentary. loved it.

Amazing, powerful piece. Suddenly, most of our lives don't seem so bad.

Great film.

check out my Channel: vimeo.com/channelMPH
There are some older films up there.
I am now using FCP 6 and it works very well.

Fantastic piece. Nice job.

very engaging and informative......I can recognise some of the same traits...in me.......whoa

Great documentary. I've been able to control my buying habits and such over the last 5 years and make a path to a more minimalist lifestyle. Ebay is a savior when it comes to parting with stuff. Receiving a monetary reward for "unpacking" is very therapeutic. I was amazed when the woman said she went back into the trash to fetch something she thought she shouldn't have thrown away. I deeply feel for these people, and it's very brave that they can talk about it on camera.

Good Job.

Nice piece very shocking. I now see why my wife does her nut at my ever expanding record collection!

Got the link from getrichslowly.org/blog

Hope to catch some more of these sorts of documentaries.

Frightening, and very well done. Will definitely show it to my friends. Got the link from metafilter.com

At 14:49 it froze. Annoying. Not your fault Martin. Mine. Not enough RAM space here I'm afraid. And think: On line via usb/via wireless card/router down stairs and a ways a way. I got your link via: TMN. The Morning News. I'm an rss of theirs.
This place I live in. It's a mess too. This video, the things it reminds me of. Can't get rid of it. Emotional attachment. How am I going to clear out my storage place? How am I going to clean and keep clean my rooms? And then, too clean? Yes, important subject. Well done my friend. Well done. Good for you. Well done!!

Wow. Well done. A fascinating glimpse into private worlds in disarray. I'm going to go straighten up my living room now.

Excellent! I look forward to more of your work Mark.

I do hope that some of the people in the documentary are seeking help. If not you, Mark, someone closed to them should try to help them seek emotional support. I'm sure it is partly the crafty film-making and clever editing, but their problems seem to lie deeper than that of hoarding.

Wow -- nice job on the film! (I followed a link from boingboing.) My mother is a hoarder, and I've only recently become aware that the mountains of stuff that surround her are, in fact, evidence of an illness and not "just her." It's still shocking to see other houses that look like what I grew up with -- the book guy was especially familiar; unfortunately, so was the lady who kept all the empty bottles. My mother has always said she was "saving" things -- from the landfill, so they could be used later, what have you -- but once in her possession, the stuff just decays until it's unusable, because she has too much to take care of any of it. Thank you so much for allowing the humanity of your subjects to come across, and for spreading awareness without judgement. (And thanks for the links -- I sent 'em to my sister, since we both fight the urge to hoard on a daily basis.) Good work!

Excellent work. I was surprised that most of the people you show were very acute with their descriptions of themselves and their problem. Being self-aware enough to be able to describe their internal motivations, past relationships (especially with parents) and other factors means that these people have been contemplating their issue for a while. I guess that makes sense, since they probably contacted you so that you were able to interview them, but I'm very curious to know how the people processed this and for how long. I find myself really wanting to understand the steps they've been taking from point-of-realization to admittance.

Great piece! I actually followed the link from BoingBoing as well. Also, great work with the type.

Wow. My mother... she does this. It was so hard to live with. I was so relieved when they sold their home. I was always afraid I'd be left to deal with it.

Thank you so much for making this documentary. I am a videographer/editor with this problem. Because I live with a family, my clutter is limited to certain areas of the house, but it's always creeping out. If I lived alone, I'm sure my house would look like what you see in this film. But my wife just keeps carrying the stuff I try to leave around back into my office.

The worst thing for someone with this form of OCD is Amazon and overnight shipping. And the iTunes Music Store. And credit cards.

I didn't know that all of the things I struggle with personally had an underlying thread: OCD. Thanks again for posting this documentary. I am going to call a therapist today and start ridding my life of clutter. Your film helped me understand that I'm not alone, and that there's a way out. By the way, I found your film via boingboing.net. And, as a further aside, it does look amazing. I love the close-up of the man's eyes. That was very moving.

I am intimately familiar with a living situation such as this - it strongly affected my soon-to-be-ex-wife and is, in fact, among the main reasons why we separated a year and a half ago and will soon be divorced. As we see from this brief documentary, knowing that one's hoarding is a serious problem does little to help. In fact, it seems to me that it almost makes things worse because the self overlays all of this highly depressing visual clutter with a tremendous guilt at "one's own weakness" for allowing it to have taken such a hold.

In our home, things kept a sort of equilibrium for quite a long time while we still had room to store things (we tended to collect small things) - but then my wife's mother died. One day not long thereafter (and without asking me if I had an opinion on the matter), my wife rented a moving truck and, with the help of two movers, relocated the entire contents of her mother's house (furniture and all) to our house. Furthermore, my mother-in-law was quite a collector herself. In fact, she had a phrase to refer to any one of the vast number of little collectibles that she would buy: "Hyacinths for the soul". Our home went from very cluttered to well-nigh uninhabitable in a very short period of time; we went from having significant floor space in our home (we actually used to have our band rehearsals there) to navigating ever-narrowing footpaths between ever-growing piles of stuff. At first I was gentle and solicitously concerned, but as time went on and our home became more of a disaster area I became more impatient and more vocal and vehement about dealing with the clutter. It took the joy from our lives and isolated us. We gradually ceased having visitors over (except for a small core of maybe three or four people who knew about the problem), and we completely ceased having strangers over. I managed to live in the whirlwind for two entire years after my mother-in-law's possessions entered it. Finally, I could tolerate it no longer and moved out.

I have been back a few times to gather up a few little things I had left behind but, looking at the house now, my wife's clutter has mushroomed to such an extreme extent that it's impossible to tell that an entire other person and his own collection of clutter once inhabited the space as well. She acknowledges that it's a serious problem but, because of her depression she is unable and/or unwilling to do anything about it. For a very long time, I offered to help her clear it out (or at least start to organize it), but she doesn't want my help - she has to do it all by herself and she's just not yet able to deal with it. I only hope that she can find some help before she accidentally burns the place down. I think that, given her choice, she'd prefer to keep everything but to keep it in some orderly way with vast rooms full of shelving and boxes or something.

If nothing else, having to watch this terrible thing overtake our lives managed to cure my own cluttered tendencies before they got similarly out of control. When I moved out I trashed, sold, or gave away the vast majority of my own collections and I now understand how liberating it can feel to no longer be so "buried in treasures". This last phrase was the name of a useful book on hoarding which I read and then gave to my wife. She read it, admitted that the problems it describes fit her perfectly........ and then went right back to sleep on the couch amidst the mountains of irrelevant wealth which imprison her.

May she soon find peace and contentment.

I have dealt with and am still dealing with a parent who is a hoarder, sometimes I think I should write a book on the experience of moving her into a room of our house and downsizing from an acre of land and 4 bedroom home. Thank you for showing some people who are self aware of the compulsion that drives them to collect material things, and drive away family and freinds

Brilliant, love the simplicity of the shots in contrast to the complexity of the people. Makes me think of how much stuff we throw out every day, how much can this planet take? Found you on vimeo.

Powerful--stunning--shocking--and terribly terribly sad. Your film has made a real impact on me and I am resolved to respect what I have and to learn what is enough.

paradoxically the footage is as gorgeous as the settings are squalid -- I think this subtly suggests why some psyches might be so attracted to say, empty shampoo bottles. They're beautiful, aren't they?

Beautifully shot and edited. This is a vice that I don't think most people even think about, myself included.

Excellent work.

Absolutely inspired. (And like Denise, I'm coming from Unclutterer too. lol)

I found this through a comment board on SFGATE.com. Like some others I see some of these tendencies in myself.

My grandmother was doing things like this before we put her into an assisted living home. I never want to have to clean like that again.

Jason Scott's weblog, ASCII links here - I'm sure you'll will be getting quite a bit of traffic from there :) This subject is fascinating, and it's good that you didn't "sweeten it up" any but let these people speak for themselves.

Martin, this is a wonderful and very moving film (I too found it via Oliver Burkeman's column in the Guardian). I'm lucky to be at the milder end of this spectrum, but I can relate to the extreme. For me, I've gradually starting overcoming the 'need' to buy new things; and I'm working to break the tyranny of thinking I need to keep lots of things 'just in case they're ever useful'.

That said, it would be very interesting to see a film about people who are obsessively tidy, too. (Someone once lectured me 'a tidy desk is a tidy mind' - but it could be a rigid and uncreative one too.)

This is a very moving film. I recall an abandoned house in Forest Gate in the 1980s that my mate and I sneaked into. It was wall to wall with some old guy's stuff, including dozens of pairs of brand new black shies, sadly none of which fit us. How did you determine at the length, 21 mins, and how you dealt with audio of your interview questions?

My paternal grandparents and father all had varying levels of the problem. They lived through the Depression. He had their immediate example. Me, I never lived in one place longer than six months from age eighteen to age thirty. From age twenty-nine to age thirty-six I traveled seventy-five to ninety percent of the time for work. This made few, high-quality, versatile, and portable possessions important. If I couldn't bring it with me, I effectively didn't have it and might as well not own it.

Others charitably called my life-style "sparse."

great documentary. bravo

Just came across this. It's beautifully done - great filming, and your sympathy to the subjects is really touching. Thanks.

do you know Alan Zweig's documentary "Vynil" (2000), about collectors of vynil records? Check it out, I think you will enjoy it.

cheers,

Ricardo

Amazing documentary. Moving, disturbing. Perfect title: "Possessed" ('the stuff you possess... possesses you')

This is just excellent. I know a family that is exactly like this.

Especially @12:39 thats just obsessive

Hi,

I just wanted to say that I really enjoyed the documentary, truly interesting and also scary stuff.

Great work!

My wigs! Scary problem. I guess that it exist, but never saw it with my own eyes.
Terrible content.
Thank you.

Wow. What a captivating and moving film. Big props to you for such skill as a film maker and such compassion for other humans.

Martin, thank you, just thank you. Your subjects (and the cinematography that illuminated their lives for the viewer) spoke for so many of us. Did anybody you encountered in making this documentary touch upon the connection between hoarding and emotional eating? I blog about this at NurturingHope.com and I believe that a sense of scarcity and deprivation at some point in life can be a trigger for both behaviors. I'd be interested in your thoughts.

A beautiful piece of film-making

I continue to send people to this wonderful documentary because it puts together, succinctly, what could go right and what could go wrong with collecting.

Brilliant documentary, Martin, thank you for making it. Did you shoot it at 24P?

Thanks for this helpful video and thank you to everybody who opened up. It is helping me to understand somebody I love dearly who has severe hoarding issues.

Apparently the Yahoo support group for those impacted by hoarders has changed it's name since Judith helpfully posted a pointer to it. It's now groups.yahoo.com/group/Friends-FamilyofHoarders-Clutterers.

very very moving.

Excellent documentary. I posted it on my blog at randomwalkway.blogspot.com/. I know several people who suffer from hoarding and it's a very difficult thing to deal with. For those who lived through WWII or the Depression I believe it's a manifestion of the scarity they experienced during that period.